Okay, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but in the immortal words of Ice Cube, "today was a good day", and since some rigorous Internet-based research found out that Ice Cube was rapping about November 30th, 1988 (or, January 20th, 1992, depending on which source you believe), I've decided that's the benchmark. Either way, it can't be denied that today was a good day for me: I went for a walk!
So, that may not seem all that earth shattering, but it's a big day for me. A little background before I explain why: today marks the 102nd day since my surgery. That's 14 weeks and 4 days. The first two weeks were spent sitting on my couch watching Netflix. The next 10 weeks were spent doing physical therapy 3 times a week, with the high point being the ability to do 2-footed toe lifts. At no point during those 10 weeks could I walk without a limp.
For the last two+ weeks, I've been down to twice-a-week physical therapy, and I've begun treadmill walking and doing deep-knee TRX work. Overall, I've been seeing steady progress, but it's been slow. The limp still shows up if I'm tired or have been moving around a lot, but my physical therapist has started asking me to test it a little bit more. At the end of last week, I asked her if I could take a walk along the Osmanthus Trail, which is where I used to do most of my trail running. It's a 2.5 mile loop through some beautiful swampland in Virginia Beach, and it had become a very comfortable place for me to run. There's not much change in elevation, but the ground is uneven and root-covered. The fact that it is 2.5 miles made it easy for me to calculate where I was, distance-wise, and it allowed me to test myself in terms of pace (I got down below 8-minute miles at my best). When she said that would be okay as long as I was careful and stopped if my limp got really bad, I was super-excited to go out and test myself a bit.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do the walk this weekend because I went to Busch Gardens with my wife and kids. Knowing that there would be a lot of walking, but at a relatively leisurely pace, I set my Runkeeper app to track my walking progress. At the end of the day, it said that I'd walked 5.7 miles in just under 5 hours. Of course, some of that mileage is when I was on rides, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It didn't seem too hard on my ankle, and it didn't seem too impressive to walk basically 1 mph, so I decided to go out to Osmanthus Trail this morning. I figured I would take it easy and see what kind of pace I could keep up without limping. I started out by walking the Bald Cyprus Trail, which is just as nice as Osmanthus, but shorter. It does have a bit more elevation change, though. The fact that it dead-ends into Osmanthus meant that I could walk it, and then either do Osmanthus or shortcut back to my car if I wasn't feeling up to it.
Based on the title of this post, you can probably tell how it went, but I'm going to describe it anyway. It was fantastic. Leaving my house this morning, my goal was to have a 20-minute per mile pace along Osmanthus. I ended up walking 4.34 miles with a sub-17 minute mile pace. The best part was that my ankle actually felt pretty good during the walk (it's tightening up a bit now), but I realized that I could easily work with those numbers and improve them. I felt like I could actually run, if I wanted to (if my physical therapist is reading this, don't worry, I didn't), and I realized that walking a TM might not be out of the realm of possibility. The next Mudder that I'm scheduled for is Seattle on October 4th. That gives me just over 5 weeks to get to the point where I can walk 12 miles or so. I'm not necessarily going to worry about pace, but if I can get below 15 minutes per mile, then I would be ecstatic.
All of that is nice, and makes me feel good about my possibilities, but it's not really why today was such a great day. That was actually the result of feeling like I am challenging myself again. This isn't to say that PT isn't challenging, or that recovery has been smooth sailing, but there is a difference. The challenge created by doing two-footed toe lifts is tough, but the progress tends to be slow and the slowness of the improvements has made me pessimistic about my potential. Today's challenge was tough but it also demonstrated that I could get back to normal activities. Granted, I'm not running on treadmills like Kobe, but for the first time I can actually see myself taking part in Tough Mudders again - and not simply in a hypothetical, "someday in the future" kind of way.
I realized that challenging ourselves serves many different purposes. It helps us understand our capabilities and potential. It helps us try different things. But, most importantly, it is the crucible through which we make ourselves successful. I think that's why challenging ourselves feels good. It's not always fun while it's happening, but it cannot be denied that a challenge, successfully met, changes us. There's no doubt that there's a lesson in there for education...
So, that may not seem all that earth shattering, but it's a big day for me. A little background before I explain why: today marks the 102nd day since my surgery. That's 14 weeks and 4 days. The first two weeks were spent sitting on my couch watching Netflix. The next 10 weeks were spent doing physical therapy 3 times a week, with the high point being the ability to do 2-footed toe lifts. At no point during those 10 weeks could I walk without a limp.
For the last two+ weeks, I've been down to twice-a-week physical therapy, and I've begun treadmill walking and doing deep-knee TRX work. Overall, I've been seeing steady progress, but it's been slow. The limp still shows up if I'm tired or have been moving around a lot, but my physical therapist has started asking me to test it a little bit more. At the end of last week, I asked her if I could take a walk along the Osmanthus Trail, which is where I used to do most of my trail running. It's a 2.5 mile loop through some beautiful swampland in Virginia Beach, and it had become a very comfortable place for me to run. There's not much change in elevation, but the ground is uneven and root-covered. The fact that it is 2.5 miles made it easy for me to calculate where I was, distance-wise, and it allowed me to test myself in terms of pace (I got down below 8-minute miles at my best). When she said that would be okay as long as I was careful and stopped if my limp got really bad, I was super-excited to go out and test myself a bit.
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| My Day in Busch Gardens |
All of that is nice, and makes me feel good about my possibilities, but it's not really why today was such a great day. That was actually the result of feeling like I am challenging myself again. This isn't to say that PT isn't challenging, or that recovery has been smooth sailing, but there is a difference. The challenge created by doing two-footed toe lifts is tough, but the progress tends to be slow and the slowness of the improvements has made me pessimistic about my potential. Today's challenge was tough but it also demonstrated that I could get back to normal activities. Granted, I'm not running on treadmills like Kobe, but for the first time I can actually see myself taking part in Tough Mudders again - and not simply in a hypothetical, "someday in the future" kind of way.
I realized that challenging ourselves serves many different purposes. It helps us understand our capabilities and potential. It helps us try different things. But, most importantly, it is the crucible through which we make ourselves successful. I think that's why challenging ourselves feels good. It's not always fun while it's happening, but it cannot be denied that a challenge, successfully met, changes us. There's no doubt that there's a lesson in there for education...
